Reflections: Session Four (E-learning Week).

Mon, 1 Sep 2008
3 min read
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Following on from my comment on Dr Tan’s blog, I feel very fulfilled after completing the readings and tasks, but I wonder if it is possible to split the tasks into separate weeks.

In my opinion, knowledge is infinite, so no matter how much one is able to absorb and learn (n, if the amount can be quantified in algebraic terms), there will always be a bit more information to absorb and learn – in other words, n + 1.

For the purposes of classroom lessons, however, time is finite – there are only two hours in a teaching period, and 168 hours in a week. This means that teaching and learning time must be used as effectively as possible to ensure learners learn at an optimal capacity.

Nevertheless, ‘optimal’ is always a grey area because of its inherent subjectivity; one person’s bread may well be another person’s poison, so what may be just the right amount of assignments for one person may be too little for another.

Then again, this could also mean that if a student finds the workload too ‘slack’, s/he could very well engage on independent research or learning in order to add-on to what s/he already has learnt.

Thus, Dr Tan could consider either working on my suggestion or aggregating the feedback he has received and will receive from various students in terms of the e-learning workload so as to find the right balance for everyone.

In any case, it’s a win/win situation for all 🙂

To sum up my reflections for this week, I think I better understand the need for this portion of the module: when I was younger, way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (LOL), my secondary school was part of the pilot programme to test out IT infrastructure in Singapore schools.

Back then, the only form of Cyberwellness we had came in the guise of “DON’T TOUCH THE DAMN THING, THE DAMN THING CAN’T WORK. OKAY?” – when our teacher tried to gently explain to us that he had kindly locked our keyboards and mice using a centralised system while he went through the finer points of ourl very boring lesson package, so that we wouldn’t surf the net and be led astray by unsavoury influences.

Because it was the year 1996, and the Internet was a new and exciting thing that no one really knew much about. Thankfully, though, we weren’t led astray but nevertheless, I think there could’ve been a better way to guide us along our learning journey.

Hence, I do agree that it is necessary for teachers to be educated on the issues that arise from ICT-mediated lessons, either face-to-face or online, along with the strategies to cope with said issues if they do occur.

With that, here’s looking to tomorrow’s class, where we share with everyone why Google Reader rocks!

Reflections: Session Three.

Tue, 26 Aug 2008
4 min read
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For this week’s reflection, I think I’ll depart slightly from the KWLQ format, as it might be a tad unwieldy to use said format in view of the questions we have to address.

At the same time, it’s also good to ‘shake things up’ a little once in a while: when you get into a routine, things become quite predictable, so I want to do something different – and perhaps, not-so-predictable – this week.

The Cool Tools Trap
Firstly, as Dr Tan himself mentioned, we should avoid “fall[ing] into the cool tools trap”. It’s all very fine and well to be using Web 2.0 tools to deliver lessons. However, there are some caveats to this, and this is my take on it:

  1. Don’t do it for the sake of doing it. If one is just going to be using Web 2.0 tools because one’s ‘HOD said so’, then why bother? I think we as teachers must be fully aware of the functions and objectives of any teaching tool before we use it, so here, it is of the imperative that we find the meaning in the tool we use before using it.
  2. Don’t do it blindly. Action must meet the need, so the tool we use must have some congruency to the topic or lesson we are going to teach. Bubbl.us is definitely very useful if you’re going to be teaching *cough cough* Educational Psychology, and you are going to draw extensive mind-maps for your students, but it may not be very useful in a grammar lesson, unless the link or connection can be drawn between creating mind-maps and grammar rules. I don’t doubt it can be done, but the teacher must rigorously test her/his idea before implementing it.
  3. Don’t do it, period. If the traditional pen-and-paper method works best, then I’d say: go for it. One doesn’t lose anything if one is able to be doubly effective in her/his lessons using simple tools. On the other hand, one could stand to lose valuable teaching time – and the attention and respect of the students, even – if one uses tools just because they’re cool.

Blog It!
This is a very fun section in which I answer Dr Tan’s questions, as posed on his Powerpoint slides:

  1. Have you come across any of these approaches as students?
    Of course! However, perhaps my definition of “student” in this case may veer slightly from the norm: I was exposed to the concept of Problem-Based Learning as an Officer Cadet while serving my National Service. Feedback from previous batches of Logistics Officers was that they had not been adequately trained/prepared to deal with problems ‘on the ground’. Hence, part of our course required us to find solutions to logistical problems that our instructors posed, based on actual events that took place in the Singapore Armed Forces.
  2. What is the relationship of these approaches?
    One thing that links these approaches together has to be the amount of emphasis placed on collaborative work. Regardless of whether it is through group discussions, presentations/critiques or online forums, the scope for interaction among students is very wide. This is important, as it not only encourages the distribution of knowledge, but it also flexible in that it builds upon knowledge bases that each pupil already has, so each pupil has the own autonomy to decide how far s/he may want to expand this knowledge base that s/he possesses.
  3. What roles do the various ICT tools/interactive resources play in these approaches?
    One role I see the various ICT tools/interactive resources playing is to facilitate the collaboration between students, thereby fulfilling one of the dimensions of engaged learning.

Reflections: Session Two.

Fri, 15 Aug 2008
2 min read
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  • K: What I already KNOW about this week’s topic.
    This week’s topic was something that was completely new to me – while I vaguely understood that teachers also had to practice ‘customer service’ and focus on giving their customers (i.e. their students) what they wanted, I never knew about the practice of Engaged Learning, and that it was a formalised set of rules/procedures on how to provide that form of ‘customer service’ to students, in terms of “student-centred learning”. I’m glad for this week’s lesson, as it definitely gave me something new to think about and reflect on.

  • W: What I WANT TO LEARN.
    I want to learn about – you guessed it – Engaged Learning, as it’s a topic that I sorely need to gain a greater sense of awareness about. Specifically, I want to know how to better translate the methodologies of engaged learning into lessons that are relevant, entertaining and educational for students.
  • L: What I LEARNED this week.
    I learnt that Engaged Learning, together with the use of ICT, possess opportunities for providing:

    • Collaboration, where users are able to interact with one another,
    • Authentic contexts/environment, where users are situated within real-life examples in their learning journey,
    • Scaffolding, where users are given adequate support structures to make meaning of what they are learning
    • Evaluation (real, meaningful, formative), where users have a chance to reflect upon what they have learnt in order to internalise their newfound knowledge.


    In order for these four factors to work, we must also recognise the roles of: the student, the teacher and ICT in this process.

  • Q: What QUESTIONS I still have.
    There is much theory behind ‘Engaged Learning’, and it seems very workable. I do not doubt its effectiveness, but one question I have is: will ‘Engaged Learning’ be able to meet the needs of all students in all schools? What if, for example, we have a segment of the student population that is still IT-illiterate? What happens then? I pose this question to my fellow classmates in order to also stimulate some discussion on the topic.